MASTER CLASS IN KUNG FU
MAX ZHANG AND MICHELLE YEOH STAR IN “MASTER Z.”
The recent Thai-Chinese martial-arts film “Triple Threat” featured three marquee-worthy Asian action stars — Iko Uwais, Tony Jaa and Tiger Chen — but was a film bewilderingly unworthy of their talents.
The Chinese “Master Z: Ip Man Legacy” has a similar all-star pedigree — Max Zhang (“Pacific Rim: Uprising”), Michelle Yeoh (“Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon,” “Crazy Rich Asians”), Dave Bautista (“Guardians of the Galaxy”) and Jaa, the star of the popular “Ong Bak” action franchise. They are all here duking it out on the streets of ’60s-era, English-ruled Hong Kong. On top of that, directing is Yuen Wooping, whose credits as a fight choreographer include “The Matrix” and “Kill Bill” movies, while producing is Donnie Yen, the star of the entertaining “Ip Man” franchise, of which this film is a very tangentially related spin-off.
But, unlike “Triple Threat,” “Master Z” isn’t a triple letdown. It’s a charming throwback to the martial-arts films of the ’70s and ’80s, with dazzling combat sequences punctuated by stiffly delivered exposition and hammy acting. But even those scenes where the fists of fury aren’t flying have an appeal. The whole thing is so studiously art directed — the neon-drenched streets are so obviously a set and the colors pop like candy — that the artifice is part of the attraction, like a musical, except here instead of breaking into song, they break into fights.
Zhang is Tin-chi Cheung, a kung fu master who went up against the legendary Ip Man in the 2015 film “Ip Man 3” and lost. Despondent, he gave up fighting and, as the film opens, he runs a small store where he lives with his young son. After rescuing a woman from some local thugs in thrall to the odious drug dealer Kit (Kevin Cheng), he’s offered a job working at a bar run by her brother, Fu (Xing Yu from “Ip Man” and “Kung Fu Hustle”).
But, of course, faster than you can say “everybody was kung fu fighting,” Cheung is pulled back into his old life because Kit is not the type to let bygones be bygones.
He burns down Cheung’s house, almost killing his son.
Plus, Kit is well-connected: His sister Kwan (Yeoh) runs a Triad crime organization but yearns to go legit; Davidson (Bautista) is theoretically a businessman and head of the merchant association but in reality is a drug kingpin; and the stiff-upper-lip British police are all on the take. Not to mention there’s a hired assassin (Jaa) running around (though Jaa ultimately is underutilized).
Instead of being cowed though, Cheung does the only thing a man of courage and conviction can do: hand-to-hand combat.
The fight between Zhang and Bautista recalls the battle between Yen and Mike Tyson in “Ip Man 3,” where it’s a showdown between Western brute strength and Eastern athletic finesse.
But two fight scenes are especially balletic: one that sweeps across and atop a city block of neon signage and scaffolding that echoes with the grace and fluidity of a Fred Astaire routine; the other is a masterpiece of small-movement kung fu choreography where Zhang and Yeoh have an intense but quiet battle involving a glass on a tabletop where neither one drop of alcohol nor blood is spilled.
It’s at these moments of pure action-movie bliss where you begin to anxiously await the next “Ip Man” film.